If Republicans were to regain control of the Senate, the probabilities of some major tax cuts would go up quite dramatically. If those tax cuts were implemented, this would have a positive impact on both the economy and the stock market. |
If the Fed pauses here, rates will come down, the house ATM machine will get filled up again, and we can all go back and do more refinancing, ... But if they keep going, like some people believe they will, then we will have a recession in the second half of 2005. |
If the Fed pauses here, rates will come down, the house ATM machine will get filled up again, and we can all go back and do more refinancing. But if they keep going, like some people believe they will, then we will have a recession in the second half of 2005. |
If we have a rising unemployment rate, we're going to see some tightening in credit terms to the household sector, which has been keeping things going, |
In 1987 we had a sharp increase in long-term interest rates and a stock market crash when there was a run on the dollar. While a lot of people think a weaker dollar is a good thing, it essentially makes us poorer and turns out not to be a good thing. |
In a longer-run sense, I would view it as marginally unproductive, a worsening of the trade-off between growth and inflation, ... But will we be able to detect that? I doubt it. |
In a longer-run sense, I would view it as marginally unproductive, a worsening of the trade-off between growth and inflation. But will we be able to detect that? I doubt it. |
In most periods throughout history, households were net suppliers of money to the economy, ... Today, by a record amount, they are net borrowers from the rest of the economy. |
It seems that what it allows you to do is ... stay in business with somewhat of an unfair advantage over your competitors, who still do have to pay their debts and pay interest on those debts. |
It will put some strain on consumer spending. |
It's almost become a random number. |
It's growing rapidly, and it does suggest that we're going to see at least a temporary pickup in economic activity. |
It's not a popular thing to say, but my suspicion is that it is upper income groups who tend to invest, and it's really investment that leads to stronger future growth, not consumption. If the tax code were skewed more in favor of middle-income groups, it's not clear to me that we would have a positive long-run impact on the economy. |
It's not so much the size of the deficit, but what we're doing with the funds. |
Maybe the economy's just going to bump along the bottom for a while or have sluggish growth. But given the state of consumer finance, I don't see how there can't be major problems if unemployment goes up. |